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REMARKS OF THE BRAZILIAN AMBASSADOR. 
MR. JOAQUIM NABUCO, AT THE FOURTEENTH 
ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE LINCOLN REPUBLICAN 
CLUB AND OF THE YOUNG MEN'S REPUBLICAN 
CLUB OF GRAND RAPIDS. ON FEBRUARY 12TH. 1906 



LINCOLN'S WORLD INFLUENCE 






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LINCOLN'S WORLD INFLUENCE. 



Sir, GentIvEmen: 

Your distinguished Representative, Mr. William Alden 
Smith, did not deceive us with his description of your an- 
nual Lincoln's feast. It is an intimate satisfaction for us all 
to join in its celebration and I thank him for having 
brought me here. The widest mark, however, of your kind- 
ness would be not to notice in my speech the dropping of 
any aitches. The Rom.an people used long ago to aspirate 
that letter, but the Latin races found they could utter the 
vowels with an economy of breath, and naturally gave way 
to what is known in the Science of Language as the law of the 
lesser exertion. This is a law, I am afraid, that does not 
sound well in this center of ever-increasing activity and com- 
petition, least of all on the present occasion, as Lincoln illus- 
trates in History just the contrary law: that of the great- 
est effort. 

Lincoln's name represents many things, one of which is 
the coming of the West to the front in American politics. 
But that subject Mr. Smith must have reserved for him- 
self or for someone very much near him. The toast he called 
upon me to answer is Lincoln's World Influence. 

I regret I can only give you features of that influence that 
present themselves at a glance to the common spectator. 

I will deal first with his dh-ect influence abroad. 



Before anything else I^incoln represents to the World the 
spiritof national union against the spirit of local separatism, 
the right and duty of nations to fight disintegration in their 
midst. In that line of thought he embodies, secondly, the 
spirit of national greatness, which he seems to have made 
every^svhere the spirit of his Century, and which is as yet 
a growing spirit. From it has sprung already after him 
more than one great nation and it seems to be brooding more 
than one great Empire from west to east. Thirdly, lyincoln's 
name brings at once to every mind, as he stood for Monroe's 
doctrine at its critical moment, the thought that but for 
him, with the breaking of the American Union, our conti- 
nental system would now be divided between itself and rent 
perhaps in two different political poles. The fourth far- 
reaching effect of Lincoln's own personality is the magic 
of his name for all who have had, or who still have, to fight 
anywhere against Slavery. 

I can give testimony of that inspiration for the Brazilian 
Abolitionists, and my friend, Senor Quesada although 
he only knows it by tradition, can give the same testimony 
for the Spanish and Hispano-American Abolitionists. Brazil 
and Cu1)a owe, especially, to Lincoln that a new great Power 
was not created in North America forty years ago, having 
African Slavery for its fighting spirit and as the principle of 
its national expansion. On the other hand, we, like the other 
American countries, owe to him that he made the leading 
country of our Continent a wholly free nation, settling in that 
way definitely the true character of American civilization. 



These are the points I would at a glance indicate as Lin- 
coln's direct, so to say, personal, influence beyond the bor- 
ders of the United States. It is a deep one. As to his /;/- 
^/r^<:^ influence, present and prospective, in History, it seems 
to me incalculable. 

Thanks to him, you, the Americans, have no longer two 
national allegiances, the State and the Union, two father- 
lands, but only one, and that the larger of the two. You 
do no longer contemplate the possibility of the greatest of 
national bodies dissolving by the right of secession into 
dozens or hundreds of corpuscles. Those who were imagin- 
ing that, as in the Greek legend, the irreconcilable brothers 
would fight until killing each other, saw instead the tragedy 
end by the embrace of the twins of the Blue and the Gray. 

The South, soon after the war was. over, was seen count- 
ing anew the stars of the old flag to make sure that they 
were all there. Such a union could never have been forced 
upon Americans by conquest, and so the gigantic civil war 
only showed to the World, as nothing else could have shown, 
the indestructibility of your national cohesion. The uni- 
versal certainty of that indestructibility which prevails since 
Lincoln is Lincoln's work and Lincoln's greatest achieve- 
ment. He settled, so to say forever, your national destiny, 
he symbolizes your national good fortune, Lincoln's World 
Influence and the United States' World Influence are one 
and the same. 

I will not attempt to measure such a mass of energy, 
of wealth, of labor, in a word, of human power. Could 






you estimate President Roosevelt's World power? Even if 
you could, that would not be sufficient, you would have to 
estimate a larger sphere yet: that of American civilization 
in the present and in the future. "Add star upon star," 
Lincoln once said, "until their light shall shine upon five 
hundred millions of a free and happy people." That is the 
limit he traced in his own imagination to the greatness of 
your country, and those shall not be at all exaggerated pro- 
portions for what you call his World Influence. 

I return, therefore, untouched to my friend, Mr. William 
Alden Smith, the great subject he gave me to treat before 
you to-night. It is too large, too wide, for me. I am sorry 
to disappoint you, yet I feel sure you will not complain of 
myself, but of your distinguished Representative who 
brought me here from so far, as for all failures in your 
expectations he is your natural, your elected scapegoat. 



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